DSI Blog

With a maze of regulations across global jurisdictions and even more complex, temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and healthcare product requirements, the life sciences supply chain is under pressure to adapt. And from the EU’s Good Distribution Practice guidelines to Brazil’s stringent serialization laws, regulatory compliance is only increasing. In the U.S., serialization, the next phase of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), goes into effect next year for pharmaceutical manufacturers. By 2023, the Act will ensure that manufacturers, repackagers, distributors and dispensers can only transact with serialized product, ensuring unit level traceability across the pharma supply chain. How are supply chain leaders in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries coping?

Global supply chains continue to grow in complexity, but even with recent high-profile security breaches and logistics slowdowns, two new studies suggest many businesses may be underestimating supply chain threats. A recent study suggests one common threat, the loss of a key supplier, is effectively shrugged off by a surprising percentage of businesses surveyed. Zurich Insurance Ltd.’s global survey report on the potential business impact of “loss of the main supplier” for small and medium enterprises demonstrates that a majority of organizations (55%) claim they would not be affected at all were they to lose their main supplier.

Today’s supply chain leaders, managers and stakeholders are inundated with any number of supply chain management challenges like escalating business complexity, rising cost pressures, pervasive skills shortages and increasing customer demands. It’s enough to make you run screaming in the opposite direction. At the same time, we’re in the midst of an exciting, digitally focused era that’s brimming with opportunities for innovation and creative problem-solving.